Audible Book Review - Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 8:05PM 
The Good: A well read audio book by the author himself, and a subject that mixes study backed information with a writing style with an understanding and passion easily illustrating how big these ideas are.
The Bad: There's so many big pointsthat you want to write down in this book that the audio form may not be the best way to read this. I'll be buying the print version for better note keeping.
The Ugly: Seeing how people are stil managed in 2010 and realizing that most of the social science behind this book was done in the 60's. Pretty sad.
Daniel Pink's book was one of those reads that don't come very often, but when they do you want to read it slow and really enjoy it. The ideas put out on the table on motivation may not have been as surprising as the title hints at, but more like someone fortifying opinions that you've always had in the back of your head with more intelligent words and actual facts.
It's like when I was in 3rd grade and as I looked at a map of the world, I told my teacher that it seemed like all of the continents fit together like a big puzzle and that maybe everything was one big piece of land at one time. My 3rd grade teacher must not have been a geological history major, so I got the run around and didn't learn about Pangea until a decade later. I think I may have stood up in class and yelled, "i knew that man...I totally knew that!" Yeah...this book is kinda like that.
Getting to the core of the book lies what Pink calls our motivations operating system. At the beginning of man we ran on motivation 1.0. Basically, we were motivated by survival. Don't get eaten, and make little caveman babies. This did us VERY well for thousands of years until we no longer needed to worry about being eaten and our lives were beginning to get a bit better as our basic needs became less of a worry.
With the industrialization of work came motivation 2.0. Basically "carrots & sticks" or rewards for wanted behavior and punishment for unwanted behavior. This also did extremely well with the mundane tasks of the assembly line type jobs of the time. Not a ton of passion for people's work so bonuses and write-ups made a lot of sense.
Now in the time of jobs that require more creative thought 2.0 not only has trouble keeping up, but completely starts to break down, opening the door for Pink's motivation 3.0. Driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose. We are now motivated not by a big raise or a bonus at the end of the year, but by the betterment of ourselves.
Chris Brogan's video review of this book is right on the money when he says that as he read it, he was thinking more of how these concepts apply to his own life than merely just the content itself. I was constantly thinking of occurances with outcomes that now become much clearer.
Once you read this book, you won't be able to unread it. If you're stuck in a job that motivates people with business practices from the 50's, you're not going to be going back to work a happy camper.
If you're looking for your next jump or a manager or business owner yourself, this is a must read. People are people and partners in making your business win, they aren't human rescources anymore.
Great book and Great read! Thanks Dan, "I knew that..I totally knew that!!!"
Reader Comments (1)
Thanks, Joe. This (the print version) is going straight to Next On My List. I haven't read it, obviously, but it reminds me of a blog post by Derek Sivers about how to quit your 9-to-5 job and start something of your own.
http://sivers.org/options
It seems to echo the notion that its easier and more worthwhile now than it was 50 years ago to opt for independence. I don't know if that's really what this book is about, but Sivers' post definitely gave me some solace after I left my job earlier this year. So there.